>> Thus, a 5 Mpix camera will actually rival a 35mm film. Only in the
>> hands of a really pro photographer and a very good lab, in conjunction
>> with a good negative-film to begin with, does the 35mm still hold some
>> advantages.

> Alas, I think not. I've recently been examining in minute detail test
> images produced by the current top "prosumer" 5 MP cameras. (Nikon 5700,
> Minolt Diamge 7HI, Fuji S602, Sony F717 and a few others with a view to
> buying one.. I'm disappointed in the results compared to my expectations
> of 35mm film technology. Which probably says that the 5 MP cameras are
> ALMOST there.

>> If you have a 100x150mm card made out of a 35mm negative, you won't
>> have more than 300 dpi across that card.

Resolving power of 35mm film has been measured in line-pairs per mm
for decades. 35mm color film with a low contrast subject will resolve
about 40 line pairs per mm. Assuming that a line-pair is 1 pixel,
that works out to

24mm x 40 lppmm x 36mm x 40 lppmm ~= 1.4 megapixel

With a high contrast subject, you can resolve 100 line pairs per mm.
Again assuming 1 line-pair per 1 pixel, that would be

24mm x 100 lppmm x 36mm x 100 lppmm ~= 8.6 megapixel

If a line-pair is equivalent to 2 pixels, then the resolving power
of 35mm film would be 2.8MP to 17MP per frame (depending on contrast).

But there's more than just resolving power.

I've been using a 2MP digital camera for the last 18 months. During
that time, I've shot 14,000 images with it. I've also shot 500-1000
images on 35mm & 120 color film.

Film still has much wider exposure latitude. With color negative
film, portions of a scene that are -2 to +3 stops away from "correct"
will come out and have usefull density on the developed film.

The digital camera's exposure has to be exactly right to slightly
under exposed. Over exposured parts of the image are not recoverable.
Comparitively, the digital camera seems like a very finicky slide film.

Last weekend, I had opportunity to compare digital & film images of
the same subject. My wife's office had a going-away party. She used
a 2MP digital camera (Olympus C-2100UZ). A friend of hers used a 35mm
film camera. I borrowed the negatives and scanned them at 2700 DPI on
a Nikon LS-2000 film scanner. Similar images from similar points of
view; both cameras operated in automatic mode.

The 35mm images were smoother and withstood magnification better.
Border-line specular highlights held more definition in the film.
Dark area in the film also held more detail. And the colors were
slightly "better". But I was comparing the images from the two
cameras side by side. Both sets of images would make good 4"x6"
prints and acceptable 8"x10" prints.

Subjectively, I think the 2MP to 5MP digital cameras are getting
close but don't yet match film. And the effectively zero per-shot
cost of digital makes it a lot cheaper to carry & use every day.

> The 35mm images were smoother and withstood magnification better.
> Border-line specular highlights held more definition in the film.
> Dark area in the film also held more detail. And the colors were
> slightly "better". But I was comparing the images from the two
> cameras side by side. Both sets of images would make good 4"x6"
> prints and acceptable 8"x10" prints.
>
> Subjectively, I think the 2MP to 5MP digital cameras are getting
> close but don't yet match film. And the effectively zero per-shot
> cost of digital makes it a lot cheaper to carry & use every day.
>
> Lee Jones
>

When we were asked to produce some CGI stuff about 5 years ago and the
standard used for scanning 35mm was around 3500dpi to end up around
the
same quality as the film stock.

OK - I can about accept most of this. All this fits very comfortably with my
impressions - based largely on personal experiences & perceptions.

Here selecting your core analysis -
> Resolving power of 35mm film has been measured in line-pairs per mm
> for decades. ....
> If a line-pair is equivalent to 2 pixels, then the resolving power
> of 35mm film would be 2.8MP to 17MP per frame (depending on contrast).

> But there's more than just resolving power....
> Film still has much wider exposure latitude. With color negative
> film, portions of a scene that are -2 to +3 stops away from "correct"
> will come out and have usefull density on the developed film.
> ............ Comparitively, the digital camera seems like a very finicky
slide film.

> Last weekend, I had opportunity to compare digital & film images of
> the same subject. My wife's office had a going-away party. She used
> a 2MP digital camera (Olympus C-2100UZ). A friend of hers used a 35mm
> film camera. I borrowed the negatives and scanned them at 2700 DPI on
> a Nikon LS-2000 film scanner.............
> The 35mm images were smoother and withstood magnification better.
> Border-line specular highlights held more definition in the film.
> Dark area in the film also held more detail. And the colors were
> slightly "better". But I was comparing the images from the two
> cameras side by side. Both sets of images would make good 4"x6"
> prints and acceptable 8"x10" prints.

> Subjectively, I think the 2MP to 5MP digital cameras are getting
> close but don't yet match film.

Agree. Without as rigorous a comparison of course :-)
I've taken about 20,000 digital photos over about the last three and a half
years, albeit with a an even lower resolution camera than your 2 MP unit.
(And a minimal amount with 35mm film in the same time). I've compared the
results from current leading edge consumer and prosumer cameras all the
while, waiting until performance reached a level and cost where I could
justify the jump to a camera that was going to be as potentially long
lasting as my 1977 Minolta SRT303b SLR. The time, I feel, has not yet come
but other factors now make a purchase desirable. I realise that the
elctronic gee gaw will probably expire long before my steam driven SRT303
does.

> And the effectively zero per-shot
> cost of digital makes it a lot cheaper to carry & use every day.

Indeed.
And the addition of really useful "make you a good photographer in spite of
yourself capabilities"* is very seductive :-). When you can bracket for
exposure, aperture, focus and I forget what else you can end up finding the
occasional very good photo ij your camera in spite of yourself. When you can
take 20 quick fire chots and have the camera automatically select the best
focussed. When you can "motor drive" indefinitely at about 2 MP and 2 or 3
fps (until your media is full). When you can ..... . ! :-)

But it will be nice when the best results are finally as good as the best
film results :-).

My parents recently had to replace their cameras (got burgled).... They
wanted to have exactly the same type. They were told in a reputable shop
that APS is being phased out within the next couple of years and they'd be
better going for a high quality 35mm or a digital camera. Certainly I've
always thought the APS format was a con.... Nothing beats my trusty Minolta
35mm SLR for my money though....
Surely the digital vs film debate depends upon the ASA of the film we
compare it to! I've taken pictures with my digital camera that if taken with
a film camera would require a film so fast that the grain would be horrible.
Okay so with B+W I'd home-process, under-expose and over-develop but the
local photographic stores don't seem keen to do that with colour.....To that
extent, even 400ASA film starts looking ropey at 8*10 whilst my 2.2Mpixel
digital camera does it okay.....
Somehow digital cameras don't evoke the same emotions as film cameras.....

Now this is very interesting. We have gone the full circle as to why
Poptronics is no more. The failure of many/most people over 30/40/50 (pick
a number) to move with the times and to want to 'Stop the World I want to
get Off'.

Poptronics and Electronics Australia failed because their Editors refused
to move with the times and with their readers interests - specifically
microcontrollers and the Internet. It is that simple. The Editors (both
over 60 years old) did not understand these new fangled things and hoped
they would go away. Well they were swept away instead.

Here we have the same attitude about wanting to stay with the things 'I
learnt as a boy' and stop progress.

I suppose this attitude is hard-wired into our brains by evolution to
preserve the stability of the family after the age of 30 or so. I thank my
lucky stars that I am not so afflicted. The sheer explosion in knowledge
now in every field possible is fascinating to me since I was educated in
physics, chemistry, mathematics and mammalian physiology. Where it is going
to end up and how anyone the age of 15 today can hope to appreciate what is
out there are the real questions. Certainly my teenage children have no
understanding of how little they know.

In the 1960's when I was at University I think we were able to touch on
most of the leading-edge topics in the Physics III, Chemistry III, etc.
lectures we attended. Today I do not think this is possible. I know I got
my 1st Class Honors degree in 1967 simply because I wrote a computer
program in the new Algol 503 language to calculate Nernst Equation values
while my supervisors and most other members of the Physics department did
not know how to program the just-introduced mainframe. (Seriously!) Nor did
they want to learn.

On Sun, 2 Mar 2003 12:27:16 +0800, Peter Crowcroft wrote:
Now this is very interesting. We have gone the full circle as to why
Poptronics is no more. The failure of many/most people over 30/40/50
(pick
a number) to move with the times and to want to 'Stop the World I
want to
get Off'.

Of course the flip side is that people forget the old ways of doing
things, and sometimes while the new works most of the time,
occasionally the old knowledge is more efficient and can solve the
problem.

> >Somehow digital cameras don't evoke the same emotions as film
cameras.....

> Now this is very interesting. We have gone the full circle as to why
> Poptronics is no more. The failure of many/most people over 30/40/50 (pick
> a number) to move with the times and to want to 'Stop the World I want to
> get Off'.

I don't disagree, but ...

I just want something that is REALLY as good as film when they tell me it's
as good as film :-). I find my digital camera ultra convenient and I'm
looking forward to a 5 MP model and I will be happy enough with the
resolution BUT I don't think we have quite caught up with the good old days
yet.

My pet peeve about modern gadgets (and programs) is the common insistence of
inserting non-optional "intelligence: between me and the reality I am trying
to interact with. I'm happy for the latest and greatest to have as many
optimising gadgets as they can fit in as long as I can decide when I want to
use them.

Auto focus? Marvellous, but I demand manual override. How does it know
exactly what I am trying to achieve in special cases? Why should I have to
tell it when I can "just do it" manually and maybe track something so
ephemeral that it would be nearly impossible to establish my aim
"intelligently".

Auto-format paragraphs, number lists, add bullet points etc - fine if you
must - but they MUST be optional so I am not held captive by a machine that
wishes to dictate M.Gates interpretation of my style to me. I largely run
with spelling checker on and most everything else off. (It shows :-)).

Oscilloscopes are a fair example of how the instrument should adapt to the
nature of the user rather than compelling the user to adapt to the nature of
the beast. The first (and still many) digital 'scopes had buttons, cursors,
keypads and more and, maybe, one shared analogue knob. Look at a good modern
scope from a maker who understands human engineering requirements. Analogue
rotary controls feature large. This is not an inherent feature of the old
analogue/new digital technology but an acknowledgement of the nature of the
human machine. Too many gee whiz new products attempt to foist programming,
manufacturing & design conveniences on their users, disguising them as user
benefits and new technology. Technological progress is marvellous but it
should be Frankenstein's servant, not his monster.

5 Mpix has been available for ages now and 6 Mpix is available too.
For *way* too much money, you can get 11 Mpix and the astronomers use 16+
Mpix in their systems. Manual override is available in all cameras not
designed as compact-cameras. After all, you don't find a 35mm compact, 3x
zoom camera with manual focus either. You need to look a bit closer at
reality. Putting manual focus on any of the compact cameras would often
mean letting user twist the lense. This would probably break the sheite
rather quickly as it's not robust enough.

>They were told in a reputable shop that APS is
>being phased out within the next couple of years

This is because the digital cameras became popular too soon after the
introduction of APS for APS to get a decent market share. It certainly looks
like APS is not going to be around in the long term - which completes the
circular argument that was in this thread a bit back, about archiving
pictures :)))

APS failed for a number of reasons.
I discarded APS for the inferior picture quality and the superior ability to
get scratches in the negatives. After all, the film size is actually
smaller than 35mm, and the film needs to be dragged in and out of the slot
in the container each time you want a reprint. My friend has gotten half
rolles completely distroyed by this scratch-mechanism.

> APS failed for a number of reasons.
> I discarded APS for the inferior picture quality and the superior
> ability to
> get scratches in the negatives. After all, the film size is actually
> smaller than 35mm, and the film needs to be dragged in and out of the slot
> in the container each time you want a reprint. My friend has gotten half
> rolles completely distroyed by this scratch-mechanism.

Personally I think the biggest reason for the failure of APS was: added
cost with little added value. Developing APS was NEVER as cheap as 35mm, yet
the ONLY "useful" benefit was it's smaller size (if a person finds putting a
35mm film into a camera too hard, well, I'll reserve my comment). Myself, I
never even considered APS. TTYL

Personally I think the biggest reason for the failure of APS was:
added cost with little added value. Developing APS was NEVER as cheap
as 35mm, yet the ONLY "useful" benefit was it's smaller size.

Yeah, that's about the size of it. Less silver, easier processing; it
OUGHT to have been cheaper. It probably WAS cheaper for everyone but the
consumer (aside from needing new machines.) Consumers weren't willing to
pay the price for the advantages that were left.

Still, it IS film. If all APS dissappears off the planet tomorrow, it'll
still be possible to rip open the cartridges containing your processed film
and treat it like any other film. Try that with a flash-memmory "miniature
card" (one of the consumer flash formats that didn't make it...)

On Mon, 2003-03-03 at 20:57, William Chops Westfield wrote:
> Still, it IS film. If all APS dissappears off the planet tomorrow, it'll
> still be possible to rip open the cartridges containing your processed film
> and treat it like any other film. Try that with a flash-memmory "miniature
> card" (one of the consumer flash formats that didn't make it...)

I think the lesson here is that you should back up your digital photos
to more than one media, and ideally to more than one location too (ie.
keep a box of CDRs at work so that you don't lose all your priceless
photos of your kids first steps etc. if your house burns down). Luckily
this is possible because digital pictures are very cheap and easy to
copy without any loss of quality.

--
------------ Alex Holden - http://www.linuxhacker.org ------------
If it doesn't work, you're not hitting it with a big enough hammer